I just want you to know that I am so proud of you. Cause Dean needed to hear it and I needed him to hear it. It was the capstone of that arc to me.

Season 2, Round 5, Bracket #1/1:

Dean: When you were little, couldn't have been more than five, you just started asking questions. How come we didn't have a mom? Why did we always have to move around? Where's Dad? I remember I begged you: "Quit asking, Sammy. You don't want to know." I just wanted you to be a kid, just for a little while longer. Always tried to protect you. Keep you safe. Dad didn't even have to tell me. It was just always my responsibility, you know? It's like I had one job. I had one job, and I screwed it up. I blew it, and for that, I'm sorry. I guess that’s what I do. I let down the people I love. You know, I let Dad down, and now I guess I’m just supposed to let you down, too. How can I? How am I supposed to live with that? What am I supposed to do? Sammy? What am I supposed to do?

Oddly, this was a harder choice for me. But I'd already made my peace with voting against the John quote last round. Nothing says Supernatural to me like codependent Winchester brothers apparently. Plus JA just killed me in this scene. Not as much as it killed Sam, of course.

I'm running out of good S5 Castiel fics

Have yo read aesc's "FreedomHangs Like Heaven"? [link]

It's a slow burn, maybe a bit dry, but I'm rereading it, and I kinda love the take on Sam.

Season 2, Round 5, Bracket #1/1:

• I am so proud of you: They are both marvellous, revelatory, relationship-clarifying quotes, but I gotta go with the John and Dean moment. It just said so much about who he was, and gave so much depth to what we were seeing onscreen. And, oh, how much he needed to hear it.

Ugh. Hard pick. Every vote is the wrong one. Also, right.

eta: Thanks, Julie. I haven't looked at aesc's stuff in an age.

Happy, happy couple! And I love Genevieve's dress. Much prettier (or maybe just more my thing) than Danneel's.

I loved seeing how gloriously happy both JA and JP looked in their wedding photos.

Um. Voting time. Fuck.

S2, R2, B1

• What am I supposed to do?: Really hard choice, but in the end this is the scene that really does it for me. Maybe because, despite what John said to him, he still doesn't get it. He still thinks he's letting people (Sam) down. And he's all alone! My heart can't take it.

John gave so much in making his speech, though. Sure, I still don't vote him as Dad of the year, but he made his love clear that episode, and talking is not easy for him. But he did it, right there.

STOP VOTING AGAINST PAPA JOHN!!!

I couldn't help it!

STOP VOTING AGAINST PAPA JOHN!!!

And in the next breath told the son he was so proud of that he may have to kill his little brother. John thy name is Flawed.

ETA: It's starting to feel like a Quote Death Match now.

See?! ehab knows!

I mean, I think that was huge of John, especially in that moment, knowing that he was going to die. Knowing that he'd never told Dean those things, and he deserved so much to hear them.

But as much as I love it, the fact that it never occurred to him to say it earlier, as well as what he had to tell Dean after that, really mitigates it (when up against Dean's quote anyway). I don't know how much of that Dean really absorbed, when all he's thinking after that is, "WHAT DO YOU MEAN I MIGHT HAVE TO KILL SAMMY?!"

I was there for John's quote for a long time. But in the end, *my* show is about the broken brothers, not the whole broken family.

Apparently.

Today.

Okay, at the moment I voted.